Last One Standing
by Cairn Rennin
Summary: Quistis looks back on her life.


All characters are copyright of Squaresoft.

## Last One Standing

She looked out over the Balamb skyline. Sea-beams glittered across the water, shimmering as the waves brushed softly against the Rinaul Coast. They were peaceful, so restful. They continued forever, never changing, always there. One by one they came, an infinite number, wave after wave after wave. Something to be relied upon. Years after she would become dust, the waves would still be there, carrying on their silent pilgrimage to the coastline.  
She came here to think, she came here to get away from everything. It was facing away from the structure, so she could not see it. As if that helped one little bit. It was a wall of obsidian. Names and dates were inscribed upon it. The sacrifices of war, a war that was never declared, and will never be. The names of comrades who fell in battle, people's sons and daughters, people's sisters and brothers, they fell. Their names are added one by one to the list, some kind of monument to the dead. She had used to go there, when the deaths were new, and she had needed a focal point for her mourning. Not now. Now she could see every facet of it, every name etched into the cold stone so clearly it was real.  
The woman looked out from the Secret Area. She was surprised that they hadn't closed it down. Perhaps even the Garden Faculty recognised the need for flexibility. It was a thought that had crossed her mind before. Why people did things, why some actions are taken. If she could understand those actions, maybe she could accept them. But forever she would be cursed with ignorance.  
_Why have you taken them from me?_ As if she expected as answer. She had never got one before, never been gifted with an answer the countless other times when she approached the balcony and asked the same question. Her search for answers continued. _Maybe not for long_.  
She could see the first name on the list: Irvine Kinneas. He was always a ladies' man, but he had found something with Selphie, something that had made the petite girl's heart skip a beat whenever they met. She envied the two of them in a way. They had found happiness, at least for a little while. Irvine was a man she had came to admire a little. He carried himself off as a flirtatious man, but once she had started to get to know him, she saw through the façade. He had been quite taken with Selphie, and she had thought at the time that the two of them had made a cute couple. But then Fate, in a cruel twist so beloved of it, took him from her grasp.  
It had hit Selphie hard. Her once happy-go-lucky and carefree attitude disappeared as quickly as Irvine's soul, extinguished from the small woman like water quenching a fire. She became depressed, staying in her room for days on end, not speaking to her concerned friends. _I tried to find out what had happened, I really did_. But it had done no good. Selphie was looking for a way out. She found it in the very next mission. Selphie left for that mission cheerfully, she recalled. Everyone had thought that she was past the depression, and in a way she was. She was euphoric, high on the drug called 'freedom'. She had found an exit, a way of being reunited with her love for eternity.  
Quistis closed her eyes and saw the second name: Selphie Tilmitt. She left Garden on that morning, everyone happy that Selphie had returned to them, but in the end she never did. Her body was returned in an oak coffin, a tasteful gold plaque the only decoration. It had read, 'Selphie Tilmitt, who will be reunited with her love in Heaven.' We all cried on that day, the four of us who were left. All of her friends from Trabia garden had come for the occasion, but they all left soon after, each with their own personal sorrow. _And I had mine. I had lost two dear friends in little over a month_.  
She spoke the next name softly, "Zell Dincht." She had considered the boy to be too emotional when she was his instructor, a sweeping assessment that she had been so fond of back when she was on top of the world. He was racked with guilt over the bombing of Trabia, was until his death. _Being shot in the back is a terrible way to be killed, and when Zell fell to the ground, a lethal round having punctured his heart, I had to watch helpless as I saw the life pour out of his pupils_. The SeeD instructor wiped away a few tears from her eyes. She was their mentor, their tutor. She had tried to be their guide, to help them in life. _Physician, heal thyself_, she thought.  
She struggled to bring the memories and emotions forward. _It would only get harder from here_, she thought, remembering the next name. "Rinoa Caraway." She had overcome her difficulties with her father, and joined the ranks of SeeD as a fully-fledged member. Life was good for her. She had felt a little left out, but when she had found out Quistis was teaching her to become a SeeD, she was much better. Quistis still felt guilt over her feeling towards the raven-haired girl.  
How many times had she cursed her name? She was happy for the two of them, so much in love. But a terrible feeling continued to eat away at her like an ulcer. Her love for Squall was that of a kind of adoptive sister, she knew that. Leftover feelings from her childhood. But they were always more than that. It had seemed a very tidy way of rationalising her feelings for Squall, and for half a second she believed it. But it was more. She had admired him from afar, trying to coax him out of his shell. Perhaps his constant evasions of her, his continuous off-handishness had made him even more of a challenge. She had cared for Squall, despite his affections for Rinoa. In the early days, she had hardly seen that it was there. Squall and Rinoa were falling in love with each other. There was nothing she could do about it, nothing that she could do to win back the one thing that she loved. In the years afterwards, she had come to accept that Rinoa and Squall were meant to be together. _How about Squall and Quistis?_ she had often asked herself. If she ever believed that there could have been a Squall and Quistis, she had been deluding herself. He did not love her, did not want her. He wanted Rinoa, and Rinoa alone. It was her that opened him up to the world, it was her that let him see the joys of life. _I couldn't help him get away from himself_.  
She saw another name, etched so finally on the obsidian. Squall Leonhart. Her body sagged when she remembered the day he died. Everything had been normal until Xu knocked on her door and told her that Squall had been fatally injured in a plane crash. Quistis hadn't answered her. She didn't know what to say. Even now, she still couldn't find the words to express what she felt.  
A few days after Rinoa had died, Quistis went looking for Squall. Nobody had seen him since Rinoa's death, and Cid was worried that he might have lost it. Quistis had tried to comfort him. He had said, 'aren't you glad she's dead? Now you can try your sick game to get into my pants all over again.' Quistis had been mortified. She had thought that maybe Squall had realised, but he had just said it like that. It had destroyed her. Every one she had held dear was gone. Squall was gone from her. She could never look at his face again. She shied away from any public events, darting out of her room to teach and then heading straight back again. When Squall died, it finally ended the chapter of her life that was filled with sorrow and grief.  
Everyone had died, everyone but her. The Fate that had taken them from her, taken them from life in their prime had laughed at her, still laughed. How long had it been? A year, maybe more. The days became the same, never changing, always the same. Whenever one finished there was another to take its place. She blinked, just once, her heavy eyelids dropping to flick away the water held there. _Gone, all gone._ She watched the waves, gliding up the coast, one after another, never changing.  
She had come to this place every night. She would often cry, wishing that things could be back to normal, that life could return to the good old days, when she and her friends had fought Ultimecia. _But you cannot live in the past. No amount of tears can reverse the course of History. You must accept the future, grasp it with both hands._ She was about to do that, to embrace Fate like her friends. Quistis stepped onto the rail that ran the length of the Secret Area. Lifting both arms high up into the air, she leant forward, and fell towards the ground.  
_Everything will be over soon, everything…all of the pain…all of the suffering…it will be gone. I will be free…_ She fell a hundred feet accelerating all the time. "Hello, my friends…"

What did you think? I could have made it longer, much longer, but I don't think that it would have made it any better. Review if you want.

[Cairn Rennin][1]

   [1]: mailto:davcrav@cwcom.net"



End file.
